Maoris returning from fishing: Evening view at East Tamaki

Albin Martin studied under the English landscape painter John Linnell, and lived and painted in Italy before emigrating to New Zealand in 1851. Investing in farmland at East Tamaki, he played an important part in Auckland's political and cultural life. He served on the Auckland Provincial Council, was a founding member of the Auckland Society of Artists established in 1869, and participated in planning the new library and art gallery. A personal friend of James Tannock Mackelvie, Martin was one of the four trustees of Mackelvie's important bequest of 1885. A conservative in artistic matters and intensely critical of the landscape realism championed by watercolourist Alfred Sharpe, Martin's 'old world' links helped to establish him as the godfather of colonial art in Auckland. Māoris Returning from Fishing: Evening View at East Tamaki was one of Martin's contributions to the second exhibition of the reformed Auckland Society of Arts in 1882. Ostensibly a depiction of the artist's Mäori neighbours returning from a fishing expedition, this pastoral idyll has more in common with the grand tradition developed by painters such as Claude Lorrain than with the realities of the Ötara Creek. As Martin himself wrote in 1877: 'If an English artist wishes to get views like Titian, Claude, and the very early Italian masters, he could not do better than come to the province of Auckland'. (from The Guide, 2001)

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